


of nothingness, of everything, of nevermind

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a three part exercise in self medicating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of nothingness, of everything, of nevermind

**la petite mort**

 

She’s always been observant, dangerously so even.

There are things about the people around you that you’re just better off not knowing – the things they crave, the things they fear, the things they should fear but lack the self-preservation for – but her subconscious always gets in the way. Picks up on the little things, picks up on Alex’s fear of elevators and Jackson’s fear of the loss of control that sleep brings with it, among other things.

It can be overwhelming at times. Sensory overload at its worst, and she’s always been a little bit paranoid that she’ll say the wrong thing to the wrong person and have it blow up in her face.

April tries hard. April tries so, so hard to say all the right things and to be liked, to be loved, and she must have missed the class or her handbook got lost in the mail, because she fails more than she doesn’t. People find her annoying or people find her strange. The girl who came back to work at the hospital but didn’t want any part of surgery, instead occupying herself by playing assistant to a, for all intents and purposes, married man. The twenty-some year old virgin in a place that moves in one big, incestuous circle, choosing to chase after the man with possibly the most baggage in the entire hospital, setting herself up for the unattainable.

She tries too hard and she thinks too much and sometimes she’s pretty sure that if she could just turn off that part of her brain, just check out for a little while and dive into the deep end without her life jacket she might be okay. At least for a little while.

They might like her better. She might like herself better.

It’s not a conscious attempt at testing that theory that gets her to this place, this place where there are two pairs of hands on her body and her thighs ache while her knees slide on the comforter, someone’s fingers digging into her hips and holding her steady.

She doesn’t actually know what gets her here. She doesn’t know what would get anyone here because who loses their virginity to a threesome? (Answer: Jackson, and maybe the combined histories of the clearly too experienced men in this equation are what leads her down that same messed up path.)

“Slow, dude,” Alex had said, at some point where they were all still wearing one article of clothing or another and, rather than laugh at the irony of the words and their source, she had forced her hands to stop shaking as she pulled at the zipper of Jackson’s jeans.

“No,” she protested, because it was out of character for her, because this was the deep end and she’d already sucked in all that air so she might as well jump in, “no, it’s okay.”

Alex hadn’t hesitated when he pulled her shirt over her head.

He doesn’t hesitate now either as his hand trails lazily down her stomach, slipping between her legs. His fingers tease her clit at the same time as Jackson thrusts up, and it’s like a switch is thrown. Her head falls back and she lets out a strangled noise and just blacks out.

It only lasts for a matter of seconds but everything just stops. Her mind goes blank and all she registers is skin on skin and this rush that she can feel from head to toe. She blinks, sucks in a ragged sort of breath, and then breaks the surface.

Survives to find it’s all how she left it.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 **got bruises on my knees for you**

 

April’s body is an open canvas.

She’s all clean, milky skin and bones beneath, fragile and perfect and as yet unmarred underneath his touch. He can press open mouthed kisses to her neck, sliding teeth and tongue down the line of it, and he catches her standing in front of the mirror one morning, fingers gingerly touching the faint red marks he left in his wake, like it’s something foreign to her, alien and not at all part of her. At least not the her she’s used to seeing in the mirror.

Jackson wraps his hand around her wrist, pulls it back down to her side and tangles their fingers. Presses a kiss to her temple as she exhales sharply, head bobbing in the space between them.

“It’s just new,” she murmurs, with the innocence of a teenager, and time will pass and marks will fade, new ones replacing them and the process repeating, but eventually she stops noticing them altogether. Stops staring in the mirror with a wide eyed expression and starts digging in her nails when he does it, when they do it, because it’s not just him here with her and he can forget that sometimes. He thinks of them as a pair instinctually, the sole surviving duo from a year full of loss, and maybe it’s that old us vs. them mentality they clung to for so long or maybe it’s just the stark contrast between April and Alex that throws him.

Where April is an open canvas, Alex is a roadmap that’s been folded too many times and torn at the edges.

There’s this scar on Alex’s back that’s almost unnoticeable until his fingers stutter over it. It’s long and thin and raised where the skin’s grown back thicker, and it takes him a while before he’s able to place it as his own doing. He remembers the party, remembers the first punch and the way Alex looked at him like that was his penance. Remembers the second and then the rest blur together but he knows there was a coffee table that splintered under the other man’s weight, glass shattering and the rug was stained tan in patches, the couch next to it smelling of bourbon.

There are other ones that aren’t his handiwork. The bullet hole that only recently relinquished its role as the elephant in the room. The reminder of a skinned knee. The one on his shoulder he claims is an old wrestling injury.

Jackson’s not stupid; it looks like a burn. He doesn’t tell Alex that for much the same reason. That ten second glimpse into Alex’s past, the admission that his brother had some sort of psychotic break and tried to kill his sister, had come out far too easily, his voice far too calm for it to have been anything close to a surprise. Jackson doesn’t want to know what kind of childhood gets you to that point, where attempted murder between family no longer makes your voice weaken and waver, and your hands remain steady.

And yet at the same time, he must want to. He’s always a little bit rougher with Alex, all sharp teeth and tight grip, and the popular theory is that he can take it, of course he can take it, he’s not April, he’s not new and he’s far from fragile, and so they balance each other out. Except sometimes he thinks he does it because he wants in. He wants under someone else’s skin for a change, while every little thing has gotten under his own lately.

So he pushes at a brick wall and hopes for a trap door.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 **i leaned on a wall and the wall leaned away**

 

Alex always figured any threesome he’d have here would involve tequila and Meredith, because, at least before Derek and post-it notes, that’s the kind of shit she would go for.

It’s surprising how little either of those things ever factor into the equation, stone cold sober with his hand fisted around Jackson’s cock and April on the edge of his bed, watching with a quiet sort of fascination. Her mouth hangs open a little, swollen lips that make him want to slick his mouth to hers and pin her flat on her back, underneath him.

And he can. It’s not just an urge that he has to ignore, something to drown in alcohol and wait for it to pass in between the legs of pretty girls he doesn’t like, much less love. He can tangle his hands in her hair and slide three fingers inside of her, slide himself inside of her, with no repercussions because he doesn’t allow for them.

Alex has gotten it in his head not to expect people to be there when you wake up. That it’s better to not want them there at all than to find yourself disappointed. He woke up in an empty hospital room disoriented, with a brand new bullet wound. His wife broke things off with a piece of paper. He understands what it is to be left and he understands that it dulls the pain down to tolerable, almost non-existent, if you start to expect it. If you anesthetize yourself to it.

This is an occasional, no strings attached threesome. It doesn’t matter that this is the fifth time this week, or that he caught Jackson whispering words that sounded like reassurances into April’s hair the other morning, or that he sometimes feels this strange, instinctual pull towards them at the bar. He doesn’t need them and they don’t need him, and it’s that lack of dependence that lets him believe that this won’t end like all the others, with someone getting shipped off to the psych ward or having prolonged run-ins with ghosts. There’s a buffer there and it’s the only thing that lets him go through with this, the only thing that keeps him feeling safe, because he knows without a single fucking doubt that he can’t handle another person breaking down, another perceived failure, without completely losing it himself.

April leans forward, a nod in askance that he returns, and then her head is dipping to replace Alex’s hand around Jackson’s cock. The other man gives a deep, throaty groan, eyes closed and elbows braced against the mattress. Her body lies across Alex’s lap and his hands come up to palm her breasts, almost unconsciously. It makes her pull off for a second, suck in a breath at the unexpected sensation, and then she settles and he goes back to tracing his thumbs over the hard, tight peaks of her nipples, his dick throbbing against his jeans.

It’s still early. There’s time. Both of those thoughts negate his whole point, make him a walking contradiction. The soulless asshole who works with babies, the guy who feels too much and shows too little of it – he’s used to it. He’s used to being left and he’s used to pretending not to care, to the point where he’s started believing his own lies. So for now there’s this, and tomorrow there might be nothing, but the point is to not feel any of it.

It’s easier that way.

Jackson’s hand ends up on Alex’s thigh, flung out and tense, right on the edge, and Alex knows exactly what sets him off when he comes just from the way that April moves, the slight twist of her head and the hollow of her cheeks; she’s a quick study and, more importantly, he’s been there, right where Jackson is, and he’s felt it.

She ends up with the bony cord of her spine against his bare chest when she pulls back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand in a way that almost looks demure coming from her. Jackson’s hand still rests warm on his thigh, relaxed now, and his knuckles brush higher when he shifts. Their breathing settles into a rhythm, synchronizes, and it almost means something.


End file.
